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Reformist he may be but Rouhani is no reason to rejoice

The election of the apparently moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran seems hopeful but is no reason to rejoice. Beyond Iran's nuclear ambitions, the overwhelmingly Shiite nation's growing role in the intensifying fighting in neighbouring Syria threatens to draw the US even further into what is now a full-scale sectarian conflict with no obvious conclusion.

Rouhani may use his popular mandate to liberalise Iran's strict controls over personal liberty but he will not stray from the hardline foreign policy of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yes, a few days before the election, Rouhani told a London newspaper he would ''engage closely in diplomatic interaction and co-operation with all countries in the region to remove the clouds of misunderstanding and rivalry". His first post-election statement did claim ''a victory of intelligence, of moderation, of progress … over extremism''. Yet Rouhani added: ''The nations who tout democracy and open dialogue should speak to the Iranian people with respect and recognise the rights of the Islamic republic.''

The comments came as British newspaper The Independent reported that Iran planned to send 4000 troops into Syria to bolster Assad - no matter who was president. Rouhani, a former top nuclear negotiator for Tehran, and Khamenei see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as crucial to Iran's survival. Assad agrees. He wrote to Rouhani at the weekend, stressing the need for "confronting the plots of hegemony and aggression against the national sovereignty in our region in a way that reflects positively on the peoples of both friendly countries as well as the peoples of the region and the whole world". Friendly countries indeed.

Leaders at the Group of Eight nations meeting in Northern Ireland on Monday and Tuesday nights Australian time now hold little hope of striking a deal to contain the Syrian dispute. They will first have to mend a bitter rift between Cold War rivals Russia - backing Assad alongside Iraq, Iran and the Hezbollah in Lebanon - and the US, opposing Assad, as are Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

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The split has widened since Washington cited Syrian use of chemical weapons as justification for sending small arms to the Sunni-dominated opposition fighting alongside militia linked to al-Qaeda. Some on the US side, including former president Bill Clinton, say Barack Obama should go further to avoid genocide should Assad emerge victorious. The risk of Obama's arms move is that it will be too small to alter the outcome but big enough to enrage Assad's allies. The US has clearly backed a Sunni uprising, so every Shiite nation and group in the region will regard Washington as an intervening enemy.

Many believe Obama's move was simply a tactic to buy time by trying to offset slightly the dominance of Assad's forces. It might have already backfired. Putin, while conceding the ''blood is on the hands of both parties'' in Syria, has lashed the US for arming rebels against a ''legitimate'' Assad regime.

''One should hardly back those who kill their enemies and eat their organs,'' Putin said. ''It is hardly in relation to the humanitarian and cultural values Europe has been professing for centuries.''

British Prime Minister David Cameron is trying to argue the arms supply will empower moderate anti-Assad forces and make them less reliant on extremist Sunnis.

Australia remains wisely on the sidelines, preferring a humanitarian and political role. Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr says the US arms decision ''increases the possibility'' of its preferred outcome, a so-called Geneva Two conference between Assad and the opposition next month. But Carr concedes that to be effective the US arms supply move requires Russia to believe Geneva Two ''is the best way of averting a trajectory of increased Western support to the Syrian opposition''. Russia is giving no signs of interpreting the US move that way.

In the meantime, the United Nations has increased its estimate of the death toll from 70,000 to 93,000. Thousands more will die and hundreds of thousands of refugees will keep flooding into nearby nations, notably the anti-Syrian kingdom of Jordan where US forces are conducting military exercises before a possible enforcement of a flight exclusion zone to protect those fleeing.

The talks between Obama and Putin on the sidelines of the G8 meeting may be the last chance to avert an even bigger human tragedy.